Stay away from ROEHL!!

You know, I'll try not to respond to you again, but this is the third time now you've taken a shot at me. The first two times were too short and cowardly to give me something to respond to. Now, without addressing many, many particulars, you simply declare me incoherent.

Many descriptors come to mind when I think of people like you doing what you are doing. Let me just say this, MP3s really are greater than CBs.

 

Found it.

Do the families and ambulance chasers know this accident started when an architect sat down to design a parking lot? Crowded, two opposing rows of blind side parking. The Tennessee truck driver was a student out with his trainer.

 

So here is a little tidbit I have learned from my FM that may help you a bit on this. Your tight time frames are usually FM imposed, at least on the flatbed side. I have had numerous conversations with my FM in my 3 months with Roehl. Usually its about the time frames. I'll see a preplan, which doesn't always come across, with actuall times usually stating NO appt and then find my load assignment says be there at 0700. Simple math finds that I need to run non stop to get there. Sometimes I can make it sometimes I can't. A phone call to my FM and BAM, I now need to be there at 0900. 2 extra hours so I don't kill anyone or myself and I can stop for that shower or spend my night at the nearest truckstop that I want to.

I am stating this as an example of what I have found in a good FM. Yes, I am on the national flatbed not 14/7 or in a van so it may be different, but I can tell you its not Roehl. Or its not Roehl in particular its the FM you have.

My roommate from orientation has already quit. He had what even I would consider the prefect storm of things that could go wrong for him, but it was topped off by his FM holding him in Gary for TWO days after he got his truck and then asking him to pick up another load past his house when he was supposed to be on home time. He was gone from home for 8 day orientation, 4 days sitting waiting for trainer, 14 days with trainer, 2 days sitting over weekend, 1 day for testing, 2 days waiting for load sitting in truck, and 3 days getting home. 34 days out. Not that I personally would not have complained, but the final insult was the "go pick up this other load 150 miles past your house." So he quit.

(On a side note, I met a driver working for another company that quit Roehl 3 months earlier. He described why he quit. I asked him who his FM was. Same guy as my roommate. Almost identical issues. So the FM is an ###.)

My point is he was exhausted and frustrated and this FM pushed him over the edge. It seems to me, and I may be reading into this, but your FM may not be the right one for you. Then again, Roehl may not be right for you, but I think its the FM. Either way from what I have gathered if you switch to National and you get a new FM, you may find it different.

My two cents...

 

Thank you, Jesus. Now, somebody is talking. You bet they are fm imposed, that much has become clear. I complained, 'everytime there is a window you want me there at the earliest moment. 'Of course, she shot back'.

It's simple math, I spelled it out in the other thread I linked. You get the load assignment, you will fuel if you have to, you will eat while you are driving.

 

Roehl in the nut shell is a starter company. It is getting more and more like the rest of the starter companies every day. Rules about everything and control over every situation, no decision left to the inexperienced driver. All he has to do is look in the DRG and it tells him what to do. He cannot make any logging mistakes, because the elogs does it for him, and he never really does learn to log. There is no freedom in this business anymore. Tight margins, cost of everything going up, and frieght rates that are still stuck in the 1970's... The problem is that drivers are the problem. If the company could get the truck from point A to point B without you they would be happy... Companies have to micro manage every aspect of the job, just so they can make a couple of bucks off a load. I think we as a company (Roehl) is left to pick up the scraps left by the mega carriers. We do have some decent loads that come out of certain places, everywhere else, we are just left chasing cheap frieght, just like all the other mid size companies.

The culture has changed alot over the last few years. I think most of these changes have been driven by the economic situation we find the country in. The problem is that it is not going to go back to the "good 'ol days" anytime soon, if ever. With $4+ a gallon fuel the days of running 50 miles "out of route" to eat at your favorite mom and pop are gone. Being able to sleep in comfort with the truck running on a 90 degree day in South Texas, sorry, you are going to sweat now, at least when the battery goes dead running the AC.

Some of the changes that we now have to operate under are not the fault of the company at all, but of government bureaucrats. I understand your shower gripe. I always used to shower in the middle of the day when I didn't have to wait for an hour in line to shower. I also used to also take a nap in the afternoon, if I wanted to. Now if I get a little tired in the afternoon, too bad. I don't have time to stop, because I only have a 14 hour window to make my money. I hate the current HOS law, and the elogs that go along with it. The problem is, that is the current reality of trucking.

I keep doing this job because I love to drive truck. I don't love all the changes that have come to this industry. It gets harder and harder to do this everyday. I feel like a machine that holds a steering wheel. I feel like the fact that a human makes the truck move from point A to point B, has been lost somewhere on the balance sheet. I really don't think there are any companies left that really do much more than pay lip service to driver satisfaction. And to add insult to injury CSA encourges companies to find new drivers with zero points, over trying to retain experienced drivers that have been through a few road side inspections, and have "points..."

I really think that all of the gains that have been made in saftey over the past several years, are going to slip away as a steady stream of new inexperienced drivers with less and less training hit the road with 80,000 pounds of truck and frieght. As the ratio of new drivers to experienced drivers goes up, the accident rate has to go up, along with the CSA score, that shippers are also starting to look at.

I guess what I am rambling on about is this, everyone trys to tell you that "that's truckin." They haven't been around long enough to konw what trucking really is. Good luck with whatever you decide to do. I hope that it works out for you.

 

First of all, I retired from the Navy after 20 years of working 16 hour days. Therefore a 14 hour day seems short to me at times.

I was on the 14/7 fleet for awhile and will tell you that the home time plus fleet does not get long hauls. That is the trade off for being home more often for longer periods of time. They have to keep that truck relatively close to the terminal so the next driver launches on time.

I will give you credit though. Their training on elogs is substandard. I've been told that they are aware of it though and working on fixing it. When they will ever actually do it is another thing.

One more piece of advice; if you decide to switch to National and they don't assign you a new FM, then ask for one. Its amazing how much the relationship between a driver and FM can make all the difference in the world.

Btw, my 3822 week was not a load rolling over from another week. It was a week of hard running that averaged at 546 miles a day. I ended day 7 with 16 minutes left on my 70 at 1030 in the morning. So it can be done. Can it be done on the Home Time Fleet? Probably not.

 

Another thing I'm beginning to notice at Roehl is a change in treatment. I will say they treat the inexperienced drivers they've trained differently. They do tend to micro manage them when they should be mentoring them till they're up to speed.

Most of us that came to the company with experience tend to be left alone to do our thing as long as we're making deliveries on time and not racking up violations. Which we have so many stupid violations that could be avoided if a proper pretrip was done. Lights and tires seem to be the biggest culprits.

 

Me tool, COLD. I love it.

 

That's a great post and I really appreciate it, too. It's often hard to tell what is the management of any particular company, what is the government and what is the time we are living in. The owner ops know about revenue, expenses, and having something shake out that makes any of it worthwhile. It's easy to imagine trucking companies having trouble having something left over that makes it worthwhile.

I'm really not judging anyone, it's just that I'm hanging from a thread with this one, grasping for a way to make it salvageable. Far as I can tell, I can still peddle this CDL somewhere, but two more companies in two months isn't helping.

 

OK, now you are talking. I took the 14/7 over the 7/7 partly because I reasoned they could give me longer runs, even said something like that to the recruiter which got a response to the effect of, 'uh huh'. Of course, you try to talk to the recruiter about average length of haul or percentage of drop and hook and the answer is 'dunno, it changes daily.' You don't say?

OK so, this stinking APU only blew cold air when it was cold at night but now that I'm in a better location and it's warm, and the APU is turned off here inside the truck, the APU has decided to kick on and star blowing hot air- I AM NOT MAKING THIS STUFF UP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

OK, so the home time fleet, they treat you like dirt and give you crappy runs. How much better is it on the national fleet? I'm telling you right now, I didn't come to Roehl to stay out three weeks. I could be doing 6 hometime days flexible a month in Schneider's tanker group. At least, I think I could. Schneider, will you hire me?

Awful, and they have two or three systems. The two other guys had experience with them already. For someone seeing it the first time, you end up tryin to unlearn what you knew and what your expectations were from paper logs. No mock ups in the classrooms, no modules to work through. I messed around with a tutorial on the Driver PC one time, I don't recall getting a lot out of that.

Yeah, I think mine is the only one doing 14/7 out of Gary, and that's all she does.

I'm shocked, I realize you lied like hell on your line four but ####, that's a lot of 61 mph miles. Or was it California, that's still a lot.